MARKETING DIRECTOR AT ABIT, TAIWAN Scott Thirwell has been spilling the beans on ABIT"s decision not to bother with Intel"s Granite Bay chipset.
The company cancelled its planned Granite Bay offering - the GB7 - and Thirwell blames Intel"s delays in readying the chipset for its decision to pull the board.
"Granite Bay was originally scheduled to be released by September, but Intel has been delaying and delaying until mid-December for mass production at the very earliest and probably early January for really hitting the retail channels, " says Thirwell in an interview with OCWorkbench.
He says he expects the channel and media reports to say "Granite Bay is too little and too late." And just to make sure, he says so himself. "I expect that we will hear the media/disties/resellers say that currently, the 845PE (IT7-MAX2 Version 2.0 and BE7 Series) offer much greater value than Granite Bay.
"Granite Bay is extremely expensive for what you get," he says.